Doom & Gloom Dispatch #29: O Mi Amore

David Lord, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Television, Loose Fur, Sonic Youth

David Lord - Forest Standards Vol. 3

Guitarist David Lord’s Forest Standards series is a little tricky to slot into any particular category. With ace drummer Chad Taylor driving things along, there’s an element of the Chicago post-rock/jazz confluence (and Lord’s quizzical melodic sensibilities and shimmery tone occasionally recall Tortoise’s Jeff Parker). But there’s plenty of other stuff going on in these intricate-yet-flowing compositions. Thanks in part to Christine Tavolacci’s lovely flute work, Vol. 3 has a misty, pastoral atmosphere that matches the cover photo. I’m reminded a bit of some of Jimmy Giuffre’s work — there’s patience and curiosity in equal measure, experimentation mixed with ease. Which is all to say that this LP is absolutely great. You need these new Standards in your life.

Herbie Hancock / Keith Jarrett - Carnegie Hall, New York City, June 30, 1974

An ARP odyssey at Carnegie Hall! This performance was part of the Newport Jazz Festival’s piano-centric celebration in NYC, which saw all kinds of players, ranging from Eubie Blake to Bill Evans to Teddy Wilson playing solo acoustic at the venerable venue. Herbie Hancock begins his set just like the others, with a meditative “Maiden Voyage,” but he soon introduces his new “toys” — Fender Rhodes, the ARP Odyssey synthesizer, the ARP 2600 synthesizer, the ARP string synthesizer and a Hohner D6 clavinet.

“Every time you get a new toy, you gotta figure out how you’re gonna incorporate it with the old toys,” Herbie tells the audience. He figures it out! The 40 minutes of music here is terrific, not unlike the great Dedication LP which would be recorded in Japan a few weeks later, but a bit looser and more expansive. The tones and textures are marvelous, the mood mellow but transfixing (and yes, occasionally a little bit funky).

Keith Jarrett, alas, doesn’t jam on the ARP, but he does give the audience a fantastic set, veering from soulful melodies to abstract wildness at the drop of a hat. It’s not Köln, but it’s klöse! And what about McCoy Tyner, who also played this evening?! I can’t find a recording of his performance, goddamnit! If you’ve got it, send it my way, please.

Television - CBGB, New York City, February 1977

For obvious reasons, I’m still on a Television / Tom Verlaine kick in 2023, revisiting the official records and — of course — digging back into the tapes! Here’s a couple audience tapes I hadn’t heard previously … and if you know me, that’s a little surprising. I’ve listened to a million Television bootlegs. Thank you to Steve for passing it along!

What we’ve got here is the band playing a multi-night stand at CBGB, its home-away-from-home, for what must have been one of the last times, right around the time that Marquee Moon was released into the wild. In a couple weeks, Television would head off on tour with Peter Gabriel across the U.S.A. But for now, they were entertaining the faithful with some fiery performances on the Bowery, the interplay confident and tight, but still absolutely thrilling and dangerous. The tape quality, you ask? I’ve heard better … and I’ve heard worse! Whatever, thank god there’s a tape.

We’ve got to give it up for Billy Ficca — the drummer is off the chain here, his fills even wilder than usual, his vibe extremely hopped up as the group plays most of their debut LP (including such rarely played tunes as “Guiding Light” and “Torn Curtain”) alongside a few lost songs like “Let Me Out,” “Kingdom Come” and “O Mi Amore.” Once again, hearing that latter tune, I’m amazed that Television never recorded it properly (there’s an instrumental studio version, but that’s it as far as I know). It sounds like a hit! Maybe Verlaine thought it sounded too much like a hit. Oh well!

Loose Fur - The Double Door, Chicago, Illinois, May 14, 2000

Last year saw the release of that ginormous Yankee Hotel Foxtrot boxed set — I haven’t made it all the way through to the end, to be honest. But I’m glad it exists!

The three jokesters pictured above (Jim O'Rourke, Glenn Kotche and Jeff Tweedy), of course, were all a part of YHF’s making — and here we’ve got their first live appearance together during the Noise Pop festival way back in the year 2000. Not sure if they were actually called Loose Fur at this juncture, but that is what they would be called eventually. They are definitely already loose! It’s an occasionally meandering performance, but the trio generates plenty of sparks, especially towards the end, when Kotche takes “Sally, Free and Easy” into the stratosphere.

Loose Fur would go on to make two LPs (not including O'Rourke’s Insignificance, which features Glenn and Jeff prominently) … and apparently there is a third album that is almost done! “When Jim and Glenn and I get in a room together, Loose Fur records just happen,” Tweedy said not too long ago. “Pure forward momentum and then a sudden realization that we’ve completed a record and it sounds like us, and not very much like anything else.” So … how about getting in a room together and finishing it up, guys?

Sonic Youth - The Mudd Club, New York City, December 7, 1982

What's next in our #SonicSummer trip? Confusion, of course. There’s some disagreement over when this gig actually took place, but I’m going with the flyer — December 7, 1982! One of the “special guests” mentioned above was none other than the Gun Club’s Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who joins Sonic Youth for a scary, slow-burn cover of “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” “A special medication version,” Pierce says. Kim appears to dedicate it to Thomas Jefferson?

“When Sonic Youth were awful, they were pretty fucking awful,” Lydia Lunch said of the band's early daze. “But at that point, almost all their shows were amazing. It was about letting your soul leak out of your fingers. Something was leaking out of them, and that's what was most moving to me. They were doing something that went beyond words, trying to get beyond something, even beyond themselves.”

More confusion. This SY era is technically the Bob Bert era ... but Bob Bert is nowhere to be heard here. He was in and out of the band, it seems, and at the Mudd Club, he’s been replaced by Tom Recchion of of the Los Angeles Free Music Society. He wouldn’t be around long, but Tom sounds good, driving everyone relentlessly through such tasty tunes as “The World Looks Red,” “Burning Spear” and an appropriately harrowing “Shaking Hell.” Sonic Youth is more recognizably a “rock” band than in 1981, but not by much.

The Lee/Thurston guitar interplay already sounds terrific and singular, all weirdo harmonics and thrashing strings. And we get some choice banter from Thurston in support of New York Rocker: “We need a paper about New York bands! You know, like, pumping energy into New York.” The publication wouldn’t last, but Sonic Youth would definitely be supplying that energy in the years to come.

Bandcamp | Merch | Concert Chronology

Peter Laughner & The Original Wolverines - WMMS Coffee Break Concert, Cleveland, Ohio, September 20, 1972

More intriguing Peter Laughner action for you today. Check out Rockne Riddlebarger’s touching remembrance of the late singer-songwriter-guitarist, which paints a unique portrait of Peter: 

“Having read some of the recently published works about the musical and personal life of Peter Laughner, I realized that my wife and I had a very different remembrance of Peter,” Rockne writes. “The Peter that we knew and loved was a young, talented musician full of enthusiasm and wit. His infectious charm and boundless humor kept us laughing nearly every moment we were with him. He was my ‘soul brother’ from the moment we met. Here is how we remember Peter.”

Highly recommended – thank you for sharing, Rockne! 

As an appropriate soundtrack, listen in on Laughner in full folkie mode, live on WMMS with The Original Wolverines. Fascinating stuff that suggests he could’ve had a career as a Michael Hurley-style troubadour. Hard to believe that this is the same guy who would be co-founding Rocket From The Tombs and Pere Ubu in a few short years. Then again, he does cover the Velvets here, so it was all connected! Thanks to Mr. Charlie for supplying the recording…  

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